t not so much because it is borrowed (for it is
not the only joke that Mr. THURSTON has conveyed) as because it serves
as a brief epitome of the play. For the thing started with the War, and
we were getting on quite well with it when an element of obstetrics was
introduced and became inextricably interwoven with the original design.
Indeed it went further and affected the destinies of the country at
large. For England had to wait till the baby was born before it could
secure its father's services as the most unlikely recruit in the
kingdom.

But you must hear more about this _John_. He was an intellectual who
threatened to achieve the apex of literary renown with a work in two
volumes (a third was to follow) on the Philosophy of Moral Courage. At
the outbreak of the present war he was at once torn asunder between his
duty to his country and his duty to himself. The latter seemed to have
the greater claim upon him, and this view was encouraged by an officer
who found himself billeted upon the Woodhouse _menage_. The dilemma had
already worried _John_ (and us) a good deal even before the extension of
the age limit made him roughly eligible for the army. Indeed I never
quite gathered what it was that ultimately decided him to enlist.
Anyhow, six months later he received a bullet in the head, and the
wound, though I am glad to say that he survived it, left him incapable
of any further intellectual strain.

That was "the cost" of the war to him. Its cost to us (in the play) was
almost as heavy. For _John's_ head still retained such a command of
brain power that he contrived to be very fluent over his theories of war
in general, theories not likely to be of any vital service at a time
when our men of fighting age are wanted to act and not think.

I give little for Mr. THURSTON'S generalities (his talk of "hysteria,"
which was never a British foible, showed his lack of elementary
observation), but the character of _John_ intrigued me as a fair example
of the type of egoist, very common among quite good fellows, who is more
concerned to satisfy his own sense of the proper thing to do than to
consider in what way, less romantic perhaps, he can best devote to the
service of his country the gifts with which nature has endowed him.

The play went very well for the first two Acts. The various members of
the _Woodhouse_ family were excellently differentiated. The father
(played with admirable humour by Mr. FREDERICK ROSS) bore bra